Fox News host Jesse Watters. (Jemal Countess/Tribune News Service)
The conservative rhetoric doesn’t square with the statistics.
According to Gun Violence Archive, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit that collects data from more than 7,500 law enforcement sources daily, only 1.1% of mass-shooting suspects over the past decade were transgender, roughly proportional with the overall population of transgender people. Data gathered by the Violence Prevention Project shows 98% of mass shooters are men.
That hasn’t stopped some politicians and activists in calling for guns to be taken away from transgender people.
Charlie Kirk, the co-founder of Turning Point USA and leading right-wing activist said on X that people wanting to medically transition to a different sex shouldn’t be allowed to own a firearm.
Rep. Tom Emmer, R-Minn., the House majority whip, steered the conversation from gun control to Minnesota’s passage of the Trans Refuge Act in 2023, asserting the law “exacerbated” mental health issues statewide.
Emmer went on to make the issue the basis of a partisan attack, saying, “If a gun wasn’t going to be available, clearly based on this young man, what little we know of it right now, he would have found another way to commit a heinous act like this. That wasn’t going to stop him, and that’s not what caused the problem. What caused the problems is all the transgender confusion that Tim Walz and his Democrat colleagues are causing.”
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